Title, Author, and Genres This Quarter, I read This World We Live In, By Susan Beth Pfeffer. I chose to read this book because I had already read Life as We Knew It, and The Dead and the Gone, the first and second books in the trilogy, and This World we Live in is the last book. I really wanted to read it because the first two books both ended without a full resolution, and I desperately wanted to know how the story ended. This book fits into the Fantasy, Apocalyptic Fiction, Suspense, and Teen Fiction genres. In order for a book to be put in the Fantasy genre, it has to be about something that is impossible. This world we live in is definitely not possible in real life, seeing as it is highly unlikely for the moon to be pushed closer to the earth due to an asteroid. It fits into the apocalyptic fiction genre because, depending on how you view it, the world is ending in these novels. Tsunamis, hurricanes, killer storms, and earthquakes are ravaging the earth, slowly killing off everything. Those who survive the unnatural ‘natural forces’ are left weakened, many homeless, with diminishing food supplies when deadly diseases kill off many more of the survivors. The novel fits into the Teen Fiction genre because Miranda, the main character, is a 17 year old teenage girl who’s perspective the book is told from, through diary entries. Lastly, this book fits into the Suspense genre for many, many reasons. One of these reasons is that the reader is constantly held in suspense, holding their breath with the knowledge that the characters of the story could easily be killed in a moment. Summary In This World We Live in, Miranda is a 17 year old teenager fighting for her life. A year previously, a meteor hit the moon and bumped it closer to the earth. Since then, all of the ‘natural’ forces have become rather unnatural. Because of the Moon’s control over tidal waves and such, freak tsunamis have been hitting all coastal cities, washing away millions. With the tsunamis came hurricanes, hitting many of the cities that had been spared major devastation so far, wiping them out as well. However, the worst were the Volcanoes. Although only several areas were affected directly by the volcanoes, the extreme amounts of smoke given off spread thousands of miles, to the point where the sun was no longer visible. For a year now, Miranda and her family have been struggling to survive, not able to grow any food and unable to buy food. All stores have closed, and Miranda’s family is one of the few still living in their area. There are weekly food deliveries, but they are small and barely sustain the family. Miranda’s brothers Matt and Jon decide to leave early in the book, to go to a river that’s a several days walk away and try to catch some fresh fish. While they are gone, Miranda and her mother have a quarrel and Miranda runs away from home, getting lost and accidentally stumbling upon a mound of bodies. Realizing with horror that several people she knows personally have died and were put in the mound, she immediately goes back home. Several days later, Matt and Jon return from their short trip to the river, bring back not only many fish but also a girl. Apparently, while on their trip, Matt met a woman named Syl and married her on the spot. Miranda and her mother are extremely surprised, but they come to know her better and decide that though she is rather eclectic and quirky, she also has a kind heart. Days pass, and the family trudges on. Then one day, the doorbell rings, and the family finds Miranda’s dad, his wife Lisa, their baby boy Gabriel, and three strangers. Miranda’s mother welcomes them all graciously into their house, though now there is a new problem- There is not enough housing or food for the newcomers, even with the food that they brought with them. The three strangers turn out to be Charlie, a jolly man who brightens up everybody’s days, and Alex and Julie Morales- two parentless teenagers who stumbled upon Lisa and her husband Hal and began traveling with them. Alex is 18 and Julie is 14, almost matching Miranda and Jonny, who are 17 and 14. Hal, Lisa, Julie, Alex, and Charlie all move into a house close to Miranda’s, that used to belong to their close family friend Mrs. Nesbitt who died in the previous year. Everybody bonds slowly, Julie and Jon becoming rather close, along with Miranda and Alex. Then, Alex reveals his plans to the family- He and Julie are going to leave as soon as they can. Alex plans on getting Julie into a convent of nuns and going to Ohio, with the hopes that a church will take him in and he can be a Monk. Everybody begs them not to leave, but Alex is determined that it is for the best for Julie. Meanwhile, Alex and Miranda become closer and closer, developing a romantic relationship. However, Alex refuses to stay in Howell, and several days later, Julie, Alex, Hal, and Miranda pack into their car and drive to the Convent for Julie. Once there, they realize that the convent had fallen apart, and that there is only one nun left, the rest probably dead. When they return home, Horton, the cat that had lived with them for more than a decade had died. Everybody is devastated, especially Jonny- Horton was his cat, and he was the most attached to him. Aside from Horton, there is another large problem- what Alex and Julie are going to do now that the convent is no longer an option. The family learns that Alex has tickets to a safe town. Safe towns are said to be towns that are nearly impossible to find, where there is enough food and shelter for everybody. After a talk with her mother, Miranda decides to go with Alex, Julie, Hal, Lisa, baby Gabriel, and Charlie to find a safe town. Before they leave, Alex and Miranda go hunting through abandoned houses to try and find bikes. Suddenly, the sky turns a sickly green color, and a tornado is visible, approaching them fast. The couple turns back and rides as fast as they can back, when Miranda is faced with an impossible decision. Alex has continued biking, trying to reach Julie and Jon, who are in the forest cutting down trees. Alex shouts out to Miranda to get his Missal, which holds his tickets to the safe town and sleeping pills. Miranda can either warn her mother and Syl, who are in her house and may not realize there is a tornado coming until too late; or, she can try to make it to Mrs. Nesbitt’s old house and warn Lisa, the baby, and Charlie, and do what Alex asked of her.
Characters The three characters I found most intriguing in this novel were Miranda, Alex, and Matt. Miranda is so interesting because the whole story is written from her perspective, so the reader sees all of her thoughts and understands her as a character much better than the others. Miranda is 17 years old, and has short hair. She is athletically fit and rather thin, because there is not enough food for anybody to maintain a healthy weight. Throughout this novel, Miranda changes drastically. In the beginning, she is rather mature for her age, but is still illogic and immature at times. By the end, she has become a character who has seen so much devastation in life all around her that she has matured a lot because of it. In the beginning of the novel, Miranda and her mother have a huge fight over a small insignificant thing Miranda and her brothers had done. In the middle of the fight, Miranda runs away, too caught up in herself to see the situation clearly. On page 34, we can see how irrationally she was thinking at the time. “I ran out, got my bike, and began pedaling as fast as I could. I didn’t care where I ended up or even that I’d been too angry to put on my coat and that it was too cold to be outside without one,” Miranda writes. She ended up returning home as soon as she realized how stupid her decision to run away had been. She matures throughout the novel, as she goes through extreme hardships time after time. On the last page of the novel, page 239, the reader comes to notice just how much Miranda has changed in the course of the novel. “There’ve been times in my life when I thought I knew everything worth knowing, the sweetness of a robin’s song, the brilliance of a field of dandelions, the exhilaration of gliding across the ice on a clear winter’s day. This past year I grew to know hunger, grief, darkness, fear. I began to understand how lonely you can feel even when all you want is to be alone,” Miranda says, while looking back on all she’s been through. Miranda was an extremely interesting character in the novel This World we Live in. Alex Morales was another fascinating character in the novel. The previous novel in the trilogy was told from his perspective, so I was also very attached to him. He is 18 years old in the novel, and looks mildly Hispanic. He is a very guarded person, and is quite determined. Throughout the entire novel, he doesn’t reveal to anybody the troubles or hardships he had been through in the past, not even to explain why he and Julie are traveling without any parents. Alex is determined to leave the family the first chance he gets and to drop Julie off at a convent, but when that plan is no longer available he immediately begins thinking of other plans. Julie (his younger sister) is Alex’s top priority, more important to him than anything else. On the side, he and Miranda have a very close, romantic relationship. They are so close in age, and get along so well together, and both need compassion. On page 191, Alex shows how much he cares for Miranda by saying something extremely unpredictable. “We’ll find a priest in Pittsburgh and get married there. I’ll get housing for you and Julie while I work in the coal mines. You won’t go hungry. I swear you won’t,” he tells Miranda. His love for Miranda gives them both hope while they suffer through life in their strange, topsy-turvy world. Matt is the third character I was interested in in this novel. He was older than both Miranda and their brother Jonny, and had been going to college before the world changed forever. Matt is portrayed through Pfeffer’s talented writing as very down-to-earth, perhaps more than any of his other family members. However, in this novel, Matt went through phases where he was also quite childish, or where he acted before he thought of the consequences of his actions. One area where I thought this was apparent was where he brings home a girl, whom he has proclaimed to be his wife after knowing her for less than a day. Jon explains how these events took place to Miranda, and how quickly Matt and Syl were a couple. “Syl said I should take a room to myself, that she and matt could share. That was Thursday night. Yesterday we went back to the river, and Matt said he and Syl had exchanged vows and in the eyes of god they were married,” Jon tells her, explaining how quickly everything happened. I found Matt interesting because his character showed how even the most down-to-earth, logical people can become irrational in the face of such large amounts of devastation. Themes In my opinion, there are two ‘big ideas’ in this novel. The first is the idea of ‘mercy killing’. It comes from a very challenging question- which is worse, to live a painful life or to not live anymore life at all? This theme comes up near the end of the novel, where Julie is paralyzed and has no way of doing anything on her own. Everybody loves Julie- she is perhaps the only person who can cheer people up from their constant gloom. But after she was picked up by the tornado, and landed paralyzed, there is a large problem- the family can barely survive on their own, without an extra member who needs to be fed, and who cannot help get firewood or do other useful jobs. Miranda knows that she has to make an extremely difficult decision- kill Julie, and put her out of her pain; or let her live on as a cripple forever, using up the family’s supplies with the inability to help them. The Second theme I found in this story was the more obvious theme of Survival. For a year now, everybody has been struggling to survive. However, in this novel, the need to survive is at a whole new level when it is becoming more and more difficult a task. Miranda’s mother starves so that her children may eat a little bit extra, and once the newcomers arrive, everybody eats a little bit less than normal so that Lisa and her baby, Gabriel, can eat a little bit more. The family even resorts to breaking into deserted houses as a means to get more necessary supplies, such as food or toilet paper. Major Conflict There were many conflicts in this novel, but there was one conflict that stood out to me more than the rest. Throughout the story, Alex was very determined that he and Julie were going to leave the care of Miranda’s family and go their own way. Everybody was against this plan, including Julie, who desperately wanted to stay. Jon really wanted the two of them to stay because of the strong friendship he had created with Julie since meeting her. Miranda wanted the two to stay, not only because of the obvious reasons such as their almost eminent doom if they left, but also because of the romantic relationship she and Alex had formed since the two of them had met. All the other members of the family wanted them to stay because Julie wasn’t even an adult yet, and even as an adult, Alex was still so young. The chances that the two of them would make it, travelling alone, were slim to none. Also, nobody wanted them to leave because of how sweet and polite they were, and how helpful they were. Despite all this, Alex was still determined to leave. His older brother Carlos, who lives in Texas, told Alex to bring Julie to a convent, and Alex was determined to go through with this. He believed that it would be the best option for Julie, and her safety came before anything. Regardless of what everybody else thought, and what may have been a better choice, Alex planned on going through with his plans until the very end. Symbolic Image
This is a picture I drew that I found symbolizes an aspect of This World we Live in. It is a picture of a polluted area, with many not eco-friendly factories, all polluting a small lake. However, in this lake, a lotus flower is growing, a symbol of beauty among all the filth. I believe that this symbolizes baby Gabriel in the novel. There is so much devastation everywhere- so many people dead, and more dying every single day. For the characters, there seems to be no hope anymore. Then, Gabriel comes to the family. He is their spark of hope, their bit of beauty among the sadness. Baby Gabriel showed everyone that even though there is so much sadness and so many lives ending, there is still happiness, and still new, precious lives. This reminds me of the lotus flower, growing among the pollution. Although there is so much sadness and ugliness, there is still a spark of beauty. Vocabulary There were many unusual words in this novel. One of these words was the word Nostalgic. This word is used in a sentence describing the food that Miranda and her family receive weekly from the city hall, and how mediocre it is. To me, to be nostalgic is to be longing for something you no longer have, or missing something. A second interesting word is the word menfolk. The sentence that this word was in was describing what the males of her family did the day she wrote that section of her diary. In my opinion, menfolk means a group of men that are somehow related, whether this relation is through family or friends. A third word that I found a bit unusual was mutual. While this word is used very often in the sciences, it is not found quite so often in literature. Miranda’s mother said this word, in a sentence describing the decision that was made for Miranda’s mother and her father to separate. In my words, mutual means something done by two or more people that they both agree on doing together. The fourth word I found interesting was the word distraught. This word was used in the novel to describe Lisa, the second wife of Miranda’s father and the mother of baby Gabriel. To me, it means disheveled and upset looking. The last word I found unusual was the word Tenement. This word was used by Miranda while she described where she wished she lived. In my words, this tenement means a bunch of rooms or housing areas all in close vicinity, to the point where they can be referred to as one. Similar Qualities The novel that I read for this project, This World we Live in, has many similar qualities with one of my absolute favorite series ever, The Maze Runner series. The Maze Runner (series) would also be sorted into apocalyptic fiction, and is similar to the novel I read for this project, This World we Live in. In The Maze Runner, there is a deadly disease called ‘the flare’ that is rapidly killing the population of the whole world. Almost everybody is dying, just like in This World we Live in, and those who aren’t dying are struggling to survive. This is also a similarity, because the family from This World we Live in also had a very prominent struggle to survive. In This World we Live in, Miranda’s whole family struggles to survive because of their extreme shortages of food, and because they are constantly set back by storms and freak weather. In The Maze Runner (series), Thomas (the main character) is constantly struggling to survive because of people who are effected by the deadly disease (the flare), but have not yet died. These infected people are extremely violent and try to kill Thomas and his friends on multiple occasions. The Maze Runner (series) also has the recurring theme of love. In This World we Live in, Alex and Miranda have a romantic relationship that continues despite of their dire situation. There is a very similar situation in The Maze Runner. In The Maze Runner, Thomas falls in love with a girl Theresa, but their love faces many challenges because of their situation. These two novels have much in common. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/425125610
This Quarter, I read This World We Live In, By Susan Beth Pfeffer. I chose to read this book because I had already read Life as We Knew It, and The Dead and the Gone, the first and second books in the trilogy, and This World we Live in is the last book. I really wanted to read it because the first two books both ended without a full resolution, and I desperately wanted to know how the story ended. This book fits into the Fantasy, Apocalyptic Fiction, Suspense, and Teen Fiction genres. In order for a book to be put in the Fantasy genre, it has to be about something that is impossible. This world we live in is definitely not possible in real life, seeing as it is highly unlikely for the moon to be pushed closer to the earth due to an asteroid. It fits into the apocalyptic fiction genre because, depending on how you view it, the world is ending in these novels. Tsunamis, hurricanes, killer storms, and earthquakes are ravaging the earth, slowly killing off everything. Those who survive the unnatural ‘natural forces’ are left weakened, many homeless, with diminishing food supplies when deadly diseases kill off many more of the survivors. The novel fits into the Teen Fiction genre because Miranda, the main character, is a 17 year old teenage girl who’s perspective the book is told from, through diary entries. Lastly, this book fits into the Suspense genre for many, many reasons. One of these reasons is that the reader is constantly held in suspense, holding their breath with the knowledge that the characters of the story could easily be killed in a moment.
Summary
In This World We Live in, Miranda is a 17 year old teenager fighting for her life. A year previously, a meteor hit the moon and bumped it closer to the earth. Since then, all of the ‘natural’ forces have become rather unnatural. Because of the Moon’s control over tidal waves and such, freak tsunamis have been hitting all coastal cities, washing away millions. With the tsunamis came hurricanes, hitting many of the cities that had been spared major devastation so far, wiping them out as well. However, the worst were the Volcanoes. Although only several areas were affected directly by the volcanoes, the extreme amounts of smoke given off spread thousands of miles, to the point where the sun was no longer visible. For a year now, Miranda and her family have been struggling to survive, not able to grow any food and unable to buy food. All stores have closed, and Miranda’s family is one of the few still living in their area. There are weekly food deliveries, but they are small and barely sustain the family. Miranda’s brothers Matt and Jon decide to leave early in the book, to go to a river that’s a several days walk away and try to catch some fresh fish. While they are gone, Miranda and her mother have a quarrel and Miranda runs away from home, getting lost and accidentally stumbling upon a mound of bodies. Realizing with horror that several people she knows personally have died and were put in the mound, she immediately goes back home. Several days later, Matt and Jon return from their short trip to the river, bring back not only many fish but also a girl. Apparently, while on their trip, Matt met a woman named Syl and married her on the spot. Miranda and her mother are extremely surprised, but they come to know her better and decide that though she is rather eclectic and quirky, she also has a kind heart.
Days pass, and the family trudges on. Then one day, the doorbell rings, and the family finds Miranda’s dad, his wife Lisa, their baby boy Gabriel, and three strangers. Miranda’s mother welcomes them all graciously into their house, though now there is a new problem- There is not enough housing or food for the newcomers, even with the food that they brought with them. The three strangers turn out to be Charlie, a jolly man who brightens up everybody’s days, and Alex and Julie Morales- two parentless teenagers who stumbled upon Lisa and her husband Hal and began traveling with them. Alex is 18 and Julie is 14, almost matching Miranda and Jonny, who are 17 and 14. Hal, Lisa, Julie, Alex, and Charlie all move into a house close to Miranda’s, that used to belong to their close family friend Mrs. Nesbitt who died in the previous year. Everybody bonds slowly, Julie and Jon becoming rather close, along with Miranda and Alex. Then, Alex reveals his plans to the family- He and Julie are going to leave as soon as they can. Alex plans on getting Julie into a convent of nuns and going to Ohio, with the hopes that a church will take him in and he can be a Monk. Everybody begs them not to leave, but Alex is determined that it is for the best for Julie. Meanwhile, Alex and Miranda become closer and closer, developing a romantic relationship. However, Alex refuses to stay in Howell, and several days later, Julie, Alex, Hal, and Miranda pack into their car and drive to the Convent for Julie. Once there, they realize that the convent had fallen apart, and that there is only one nun left, the rest probably dead.
When they return home, Horton, the cat that had lived with them for more than a decade had died. Everybody is devastated, especially Jonny- Horton was his cat, and he was the most attached to him. Aside from Horton, there is another large problem- what Alex and Julie are going to do now that the convent is no longer an option. The family learns that Alex has tickets to a safe town. Safe towns are said to be towns that are nearly impossible to find, where there is enough food and shelter for everybody. After a talk with her mother, Miranda decides to go with Alex, Julie, Hal, Lisa, baby Gabriel, and Charlie to find a safe town. Before they leave, Alex and Miranda go hunting through abandoned houses to try and find bikes. Suddenly, the sky turns a sickly green color, and a tornado is visible, approaching them fast. The couple turns back and rides as fast as they can back, when Miranda is faced with an impossible decision. Alex has continued biking, trying to reach Julie and Jon, who are in the forest cutting down trees. Alex shouts out to Miranda to get his Missal, which holds his tickets to the safe town and sleeping pills. Miranda can either warn her mother and Syl, who are in her house and may not realize there is a tornado coming until too late; or, she can try to make it to Mrs. Nesbitt’s old house and warn Lisa, the baby, and Charlie, and do what Alex asked of her.
Characters
The three characters I found most intriguing in this novel were Miranda, Alex, and Matt. Miranda is so interesting because the whole story is written from her perspective, so the reader sees all of her thoughts and understands her as a character much better than the others. Miranda is 17 years old, and has short hair. She is athletically fit and rather thin, because there is not enough food for anybody to maintain a healthy weight. Throughout this novel, Miranda changes drastically. In the beginning, she is rather mature for her age, but is still illogic and immature at times. By the end, she has become a character who has seen so much devastation in life all around her that she has matured a lot because of it. In the beginning of the novel, Miranda and her mother have a huge fight over a small insignificant thing Miranda and her brothers had done. In the middle of the fight, Miranda runs away, too caught up in herself to see the situation clearly. On page 34, we can see how irrationally she was thinking at the time. “I ran out, got my bike, and began pedaling as fast as I could. I didn’t care where I ended up or even that I’d been too angry to put on my coat and that it was too cold to be outside without one,” Miranda writes. She ended up returning home as soon as she realized how stupid her decision to run away had been. She matures throughout the novel, as she goes through extreme hardships time after time. On the last page of the novel, page 239, the reader comes to notice just how much Miranda has changed in the course of the novel. “There’ve been times in my life when I thought I knew everything worth knowing, the sweetness of a robin’s song, the brilliance of a field of dandelions, the exhilaration of gliding across the ice on a clear winter’s day. This past year I grew to know hunger, grief, darkness, fear. I began to understand how lonely you can feel even when all you want is to be alone,” Miranda says, while looking back on all she’s been through. Miranda was an extremely interesting character in the novel This World we Live in.
Alex Morales was another fascinating character in the novel. The previous novel in the trilogy was told from his perspective, so I was also very attached to him. He is 18 years old in the novel, and looks mildly Hispanic. He is a very guarded person, and is quite determined. Throughout the entire novel, he doesn’t reveal to anybody the troubles or hardships he had been through in the past, not even to explain why he and Julie are traveling without any parents. Alex is determined to leave the family the first chance he gets and to drop Julie off at a convent, but when that plan is no longer available he immediately begins thinking of other plans. Julie (his younger sister) is Alex’s top priority, more important to him than anything else. On the side, he and Miranda have a very close, romantic relationship. They are so close in age, and get along so well together, and both need compassion. On page 191, Alex shows how much he cares for Miranda by saying something extremely unpredictable. “We’ll find a priest in Pittsburgh and get married there. I’ll get housing for you and Julie while I work in the coal mines. You won’t go hungry. I swear you won’t,” he tells Miranda. His love for Miranda gives them both hope while they suffer through life in their strange, topsy-turvy world.
Matt is the third character I was interested in in this novel. He was older than both Miranda and their brother Jonny, and had been going to college before the world changed forever. Matt is portrayed through Pfeffer’s talented writing as very down-to-earth, perhaps more than any of his other family members. However, in this novel, Matt went through phases where he was also quite childish, or where he acted before he thought of the consequences of his actions. One area where I thought this was apparent was where he brings home a girl, whom he has proclaimed to be his wife after knowing her for less than a day. Jon explains how these events took place to Miranda, and how quickly Matt and Syl were a couple. “Syl said I should take a room to myself, that she and matt could share. That was Thursday night. Yesterday we went back to the river, and Matt said he and Syl had exchanged vows and in the eyes of god they were married,” Jon tells her, explaining how quickly everything happened. I found Matt interesting because his character showed how even the most down-to-earth, logical people can become irrational in the face of such large amounts of devastation.
Themes
In my opinion, there are two ‘big ideas’ in this novel. The first is the idea of ‘mercy killing’. It comes from a very challenging question- which is worse, to live a painful life or to not live anymore life at all? This theme comes up near the end of the novel, where Julie is paralyzed and has no way of doing anything on her own. Everybody loves Julie- she is perhaps the only person who can cheer people up from their constant gloom. But after she was picked up by the tornado, and landed paralyzed, there is a large problem- the family can barely survive on their own, without an extra member who needs to be fed, and who cannot help get firewood or do other useful jobs. Miranda knows that she has to make an extremely difficult decision- kill Julie, and put her out of her pain; or let her live on as a cripple forever, using up the family’s supplies with the inability to help them.
The Second theme I found in this story was the more obvious theme of Survival. For a year now, everybody has been struggling to survive. However, in this novel, the need to survive is at a whole new level when it is becoming more and more difficult a task. Miranda’s mother starves so that her children may eat a little bit extra, and once the newcomers arrive, everybody eats a little bit less than normal so that Lisa and her baby, Gabriel, can eat a little bit more. The family even resorts to breaking into deserted houses as a means to get more necessary supplies, such as food or toilet paper.
Major Conflict
There were many conflicts in this novel, but there was one conflict that stood out to me more than the rest. Throughout the story, Alex was very determined that he and Julie were going to leave the care of Miranda’s family and go their own way. Everybody was against this plan, including Julie, who desperately wanted to stay. Jon really wanted the two of them to stay because of the strong friendship he had created with Julie since meeting her. Miranda wanted the two to stay, not only because of the obvious reasons such as their almost eminent doom if they left, but also because of the romantic relationship she and Alex had formed since the two of them had met. All the other members of the family wanted them to stay because Julie wasn’t even an adult yet, and even as an adult, Alex was still so young. The chances that the two of them would make it, travelling alone, were slim to none. Also, nobody wanted them to leave because of how sweet and polite they were, and how helpful they were. Despite all this, Alex was still determined to leave. His older brother Carlos, who lives in Texas, told Alex to bring Julie to a convent, and Alex was determined to go through with this. He believed that it would be the best option for Julie, and her safety came before anything. Regardless of what everybody else thought, and what may have been a better choice, Alex planned on going through with his plans until the very end.
Symbolic Image
This is a picture I drew that I found symbolizes an aspect of This World we Live in. It is a picture of a polluted area, with many not eco-friendly factories, all polluting a small lake. However, in this lake, a lotus flower is growing, a symbol of beauty among all the filth. I believe that this symbolizes baby Gabriel in the novel. There is so much devastation everywhere- so many people dead, and more dying every single day. For the characters, there seems to be no hope anymore. Then, Gabriel comes to the family. He is their spark of hope, their bit of beauty among the sadness. Baby Gabriel showed everyone that even though there is so much sadness and so many lives ending, there is still happiness, and still new, precious lives. This reminds me of the lotus flower, growing among the pollution. Although there is so much sadness and ugliness, there is still a spark of beauty.
Vocabulary
There were many unusual words in this novel. One of these words was the word Nostalgic. This word is used in a sentence describing the food that Miranda and her family receive weekly from the city hall, and how mediocre it is. To me, to be nostalgic is to be longing for something you no longer have, or missing something. A second interesting word is the word menfolk. The sentence that this word was in was describing what the males of her family did the day she wrote that section of her diary. In my opinion, menfolk means a group of men that are somehow related, whether this relation is through family or friends. A third word that I found a bit unusual was mutual. While this word is used very often in the sciences, it is not found quite so often in literature. Miranda’s mother said this word, in a sentence describing the decision that was made for Miranda’s mother and her father to separate. In my words, mutual means something done by two or more people that they both agree on doing together. The fourth word I found interesting was the word distraught. This word was used in the novel to describe Lisa, the second wife of Miranda’s father and the mother of baby Gabriel. To me, it means disheveled and upset looking. The last word I found unusual was the word Tenement. This word was used by Miranda while she described where she wished she lived. In my words, this tenement means a bunch of rooms or housing areas all in close vicinity, to the point where they can be referred to as one.
Similar Qualities
The novel that I read for this project, This World we Live in, has many similar qualities with one of my absolute favorite series ever, The Maze Runner series. The Maze Runner (series) would also be sorted into apocalyptic fiction, and is similar to the novel I read for this project, This World we Live in. In The Maze Runner, there is a deadly disease called ‘the flare’ that is rapidly killing the population of the whole world. Almost everybody is dying, just like in This World we Live in, and those who aren’t dying are struggling to survive. This is also a similarity, because the family from This World we Live in also had a very prominent struggle to survive. In This World we Live in, Miranda’s whole family struggles to survive because of their extreme shortages of food, and because they are constantly set back by storms and freak weather. In The Maze Runner (series), Thomas (the main character) is constantly struggling to survive because of people who are effected by the deadly disease (the flare), but have not yet died. These infected people are extremely violent and try to kill Thomas and his friends on multiple occasions. The Maze Runner (series) also has the recurring theme of love. In This World we Live in, Alex and Miranda have a romantic relationship that continues despite of their dire situation. There is a very similar situation in The Maze Runner. In The Maze Runner, Thomas falls in love with a girl Theresa, but their love faces many challenges because of their situation. These two novels have much in common.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/425125610